Tactic Arena

Smyslov did not find moves nobody else could find. He found the same moves everybody else found — and somehow, every single time, they worked better for him. Born Into Chess Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov was born on March 24, 1921, in Moscow. Chess ran in his blood from the very beginning — his father was a strong player who became his first teacher. He started competitive chess at 14, having already devoured his father's chess library — Alekhine's own collection of games, Lasker, Capablanca, and stacks of Soviet chess magazines. By 17 he had won the USSR Junior Championship and tied for first in the Moscow City Championship. By 19, in his very first Soviet Championship final in 1940, he finished third — ahead of the reigning champion Botvinnik. The chess world took notice of the calm, red-haired teenager who made impossibly difficult decisions look effortless. The Style — Chess as Music Vasily Smyslov had two great passions in life: chess and opera. And the two were never truly s...

  When Alekhine died in 1946 still holding the crown, the chess world had no champion for the first time in history. Two years passed. Then one man stepped forward and claimed the throne — not just as a player, but as a scientist, a system builder, and the architect of an entire chess civilization. His name : Mikhail Botvinnik. Born in Finland, Raised in Leningrad Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was born on August 17, 1911, in Kuokkala — a town in the Grand Duchy of Finland that was then part of the Russian Empire, now the district of Repino in Saint Petersburg. His father was a dental technician. His mother was a dentist. They were Russian Jews, and it was his mother's profession that allowed the family to live outside the Pale of Settlement — the restricted zone where most Jews in the Russian Empire were forced to reside. In autumn 1923, at the age of 12, Botvinnik was taught chess by a school friend of his older brother, using a homemade set. He instantly fell in love with the gam...

Every World Chess Champion before him had given their life entirely to the game. Max Euwe gave it his lunch breaks and his school holidays. And it was still enough to beat the best player in the world. A Boy Born for Two Things Machgielis "Max" Euwe was born on May 20, 1901, in Watergraafsmeer, a suburb of Amsterdam. His parents were both devoted chess players, and they taught him the moves at the early age of 4. The talent was obvious from the start. By 12, he was already a club player. By 20, he was champion of Holland. But professional chess had little attraction for him — he devoted himself instead to his studies, excelling in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. In 1924, he received his first appointment as a teacher of mathematics. In 1926, he earned his doctorate in pure mathematics. Chess, during all of this, could only be played in vacation time. And yet, even during those years, he managed to win a number of first prizes in English tournaments. He was not a p...